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8:59 PM, Wednesday May 4th 2022
Starting with your cylinders around arbitrary minor axes, I did notice pretty quickly that you don't appear to have included very much variation to the rates of foreshortening of your cylinders, which as shown here in bold from the assignment section was indeed requested. Through a good chunk of this set, you appear to be trying to eliminate your lengthwise vanishing point (forcing it to infinity so as to draw the lines on the page as being parallel there, instead of converging), up until your early hundreds where you start to incorporate a bit of convergence to them.
In truth, forcing your vanishing point to infinity and eliminating that convergence is actually incorrect. We do not control where the vanishing point goes - we merely decide how we want our form to be oriented in space. This in turn determines the orientation of the different edges of the form, which then determines where the vanishing point goes. The vanishing point itself only "goes to infinity" in the manner discussed back In Lesson 1 when the edges it governs run perpendicular to the viewer's angle of sight, rather than slanting towards or away from them through the depth of the scene. Given the nature of this challenge, and how we're working with cylinders that are rotated freely in space, we can pretty much assume that this perfect of an alignment isn't likely to happen.
As to the rest of this challenge, you're generally doing okay - there's a bit of hesitation in your lines and ellipses, but it's fairly slight. Just be sure to review how all three stages of the ghosting method work - specifically the fact that our time is invested primarily in the planning and preparation phases, with the execution phase being reserved merely for a singular, confident stroke - no hesitation or second-guessing. While this is easier said than done, it is ultimately a matter of choice. Choosing to accept that mistakes will happen, committing to what you've prepared, and pushing through.
Moving onto your cylinders in boxes, it appears that you have not done this one correctly. This exercise is really all about helping develop students' understanding of how to construct boxes which feature two opposite faces which are proportionally square, regardless of how the form is oriented in space. We do this not by memorizing every possible configuration, but rather by continuing to develop your subconscious understanding of space through repetition, and through analysis (by way of the line extensions).
Where the box challenge's line extensions helped to develop a stronger sense of how to achieve more consistent convergences in our lines, here we add three more lines for each ellipse: the minor axis, and the two contact point lines. In checking how far off these are from converging towards the box's own vanishing points, we can see how far off we were from having the ellipse represent a circle in 3D space, and in turn how far off we were from having the plane that encloses it from representing a square.
These additional lines - the minor axis and the two contact point lines provide each ellipse with one line for each of the box's own dimensions, which you can see here in the instructions - each vanishing point has a total of 6 lines converging towards it. Four from the box, and one from each of the two ellipses.
In yours however, you've got 10 lines running down the length of the cylinder (4 from the box, and 6 from the two ellipses), and 4 lines going off towards the other two vanishing points. It appears that you misunderstood what was being demonstrated in the instructions, so I recommend you go through those again.
While normally I would be assigning revisions for the first section (given how many cylinders you drew with effectively parallel side edges), you did correct this to a point towards the end. More variation to the rates of foreshortening, especially with more cases of dramatic foreshortening (which were left out entirely) would have been nice to see, but I'll leave that for you to practice on your own. That said, I am going to need to see that you can apply the line extensions for your cylinders in boxes correctly, so as to apply the exercise correctly. You'll find revisions to that effect below.
Next Steps:
Please submit 30 cylinders in boxes, with the line extensions applied correctly.
8:48 AM, Tuesday May 10th 2022
Hi Uncomfortable,
Thanks for your review. I've completed 30 extra cylinders - hope i got the task right now.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S9OFTYuXnVsK-B8__l8H5Dtpw9U-SrSD/view?usp=sharing
10:39 PM, Wednesday May 11th 2022
Each ellipse has three of its own lines - one minor axis line, and two contact point lines. The contact point lines are the ones that go through the points at which the ellipse touches the plane that encloses it. Since the ellipse would have 4 such contact points, they break into two pairs, each pair giving us one line that passes through it.
You are doing better, but unfortunately still not correct, because you've only been drawing one of the two contact point lines for each ellipse. In my original feedback, I said the following in analyzing your work:
In yours however, you've got 10 lines running down the length of the cylinder (4 from the box, and 6 from the two ellipses), and 4 lines going off towards the other two vanishing points.
Currently, you now have:
-
6 lines running down the length of the cylinder (4 from the box, 1 from each ellipse)
-
6 lines extending in one of the other directions
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4 lines extending in the last direction
The missing 2 from the last group are the other two contact points.
Edit: Oh, one more quick recommendation - right now you're extending your minor axes only slightly. This is because you're confusing it with how we handle the first part of the challenge (the cylinders around arbitrary minor axes). Here, you should be extending them as far back as the rest, so you can properly test how they converge towards the given vanishing point.
Next Steps:
Please submit another 10 cylinders in boxes.
4:14 AM, Saturday May 14th 2022
Hi Uncomfortable, here they are - 10 more cylinders in boxes...
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1kZ80qC7hv9janaQsU5bwRo8XG_DUEJa8?usp=sharing
Rapid Viz
Rapid Viz is a book after mine own heart, and exists very much in the same spirit of the concepts that inspired Drawabox. It's all about getting your ideas down on the page, doing so quickly and clearly, so as to communicate them to others. These skills are not only critical in design, but also in the myriad of technical and STEM fields that can really benefit from having someone who can facilitate getting one person's idea across to another.
Where Drawabox focuses on developing underlying spatial thinking skills to help facilitate that kind of communication, Rapid Viz's quick and dirty approach can help students loosen up and really move past the irrelevant matters of being "perfect" or "correct", and focus instead on getting your ideas from your brain, onto the page, and into someone else's brain as efficiently as possible.